Note: This documentation was hastily thrown together and is incomplete. Hopefully it's sufficient for the general case; at least for now. I can always be emailed with questions (nknight@runawaynet.com).
The syntax of autofox.cfg is simple. Lines that start with '#' are comments and ignored by AutoFox. Everything else is a name-value pair separated by '='. Whitespace is irrelivant except that an individual name-value pair must currently reside on one line by itself. Otherwise the '=' may be surrounded by spaces or tabs to your heart's content.
updatehour and updatemin are the values to modify, along with updateday, which needs a little explanation. If you're updating before midnight server time, you'll need to set updateday to previous (e.g. if you want comics to appear at 2100 the night prior to the date the comic is assigned). Otherwise set it to same. This is another part of the "not very clean" thing. :)
date while you're setting permissions on uploads/ later on.
Set "url" as appropriate (e.g. http://www.yourdomain.com/).
Under public_html/ in your home directory on your host, place the following (along with any other files the site needs, of course):
autofox.pl autofox.cfg indextemplate.html daytemplate.html archivetemplate.html storyline.txt
and create the directories
comics/ images/ d/ uploads/
Put your next_day/prev_day/etc. images under images/.
Up to now, all this can be done with an FTP client. Now, however, you need to set the permissions. Many FTP clients can handle this, but it varies wildly in how to do it, so it's best done from a shell. Telnet or ssh in to your host and execute these commands:
cd public_html chmod u+x autofox.pl chmod og-rwx uploads
This makes autofox.pl executable so it can be run and then prevents anyone but you from accessing uploads/ and thus reading ahead. :)
(If you wish, you can also do the same for the templates, autofox.pl, and autofox.cfg. Either re-run 'chmod og-rwx' for each file, or just tack them on like so: 'chmod og-rwx uploads autofox.pl autofox.cfg indextemplate.html daytemplate.html archivetemplate.html'.)
Now you need to upload all your strips to uploads/.
At this point, you should be able to run autofox.pl manually. Telnet or ssh into your provider and run:
cd public_html ./autofox.pl
(note that's a dot and a slash before the filename)
Then check the site in a browser. If you don't get something vaguely like what the site should look like, check autofox.log (created in the same directory that autofox.pl resides in) for any error messages, double check what you've done, and if it's right, yell at me, because something's wrong. :)
There is an unfortunate design oversight in the HTML standards. The dropbox format is excellent for uses such as those it's put to on webcomic sites, but its functionality must be handled by a separate script or scripts; it can't simply be used as a link mechanism, which would be extremely convenient for our purposes.
There are two ways that this may be done. KeenS* has used both in its history, and currently uses the most compatible one, which is a server-side script that takes the selection as input and redirects to the appropriate URL.
The other method is to use Javascript, which runs on the client (browser) to effect the redirection. This method is simpler to setup, but depends on a browser having Javascript capability. Most graphical browsers in use do have Javascript support, but some do not, and some users of browsers that do have Javascript support turn it off as a security measure, a usability measure, or both.
In the interest of compatibility, I include with AutoFox the ridiculously simple but completely sufficient script ddredirect.pl. Where exactly you put this is something you'll need to find out from your webhost. Generally it will go in a certain directory called something like cgi-bin. Depending on the host, you might need to do some special setup to get it working, or you might just be able to drop it in a directory, make it executable (chmod u+x ddredirect.pl), set the proper URL in autofox.cfg (variable name is ddredirect), and go.
You COULD simply run AutoFox manually every time you update, but this takes away part of the point of an automation system, and kinda puts a crimper on updates while you're vacationing or otherwise lacking in access to a computer with a 'net connection.
Instead, you can use a decades-old but eternally useful Unix utility called cron. How it got this name I'm uncertain, but its operation is simple: it runs a given command at a given time(s).
To tell cron to run AutoFox nightly, run the command crontab -e while logged in via telnet or ssh to your provider. You will be presented with a mostly blank screen that is waiting for input. If you see a bunch of tildes (~) along the left side of the screen, you're in an editor called vi, otherwise you're probably in a more intuitive editor that is probably presenting you with some sort of indication of how to use it. If you're in vi and don't know how to use it, here's a quick tutorial (if you're familiar with vi, just skip this bit):
vi, unlike most editors, has two major modes of operation: input mode, and command mode. While in command mode (which is what it starts up in by default) you do NOT want to hit random keys, as those keys will have varying effects that may include destroying your document. Depending on the flavour of vi, you may or may not get a visual indication of which mode you're in. If you're ever unsure, just hit escape, which will take you to command mode if you're in insert mode, and do nothing of consequence if you're in command mode. To enter input mode, hit 'i'.
Arrow keys should work as normal for moving the cursor around. If not, you can go to command mode and use the keys 'h' (left), 'k' (up), 'j' (down), and 'l' (right) to move the cursor around.
Now that you're in the editor, you need to insert this, modified for your needs:
00 23 * * * cd /path/to/your/public_html/directory && ./autofox.pl
You need to edit three things on that line. The two numbers at the start, and the path to the appropriate directory.
The two numbers at the start (00 and 23) are the minute and hour (in that order) for cron to run the script. Set these to whatever you set updatemin and updatehour to in autofox.cfg.
You can find out what to set the path to exactly by telnet/sshing in to your provider, switching to your public_html directory (cd public_html) and running the command pwd, which will output the full path to the directory.
Tags in the templates are handled exactly as on KeenSp(ot|ace) in the format ***tagname***, and the supported tags work in largely identical fashions to their KS counterparts.
The following tags are supported. Most work exactly the same as on KS with only minor cosmetic differences at most. Significant differences are noted later.
The main difference for the storyline tag is that it's somewhat incomplete. Currently it displays all the storylines at once in a fully expanded form regardless of where in the archive you are, and does NOT display the current storyline automatically. The storylinestart and storylinestarturl tags are also currently missing. This is all on the "to-fix ASAP" list. For the moment, though, it works in a fairly usable fashion.